The Two Percenters
Buffalo Bloggers, we’re dead last!
Only 2% of the population reads or contributes to blogs in some way, shape, or form. We’re tied for last with Pittsburgh.
Here’s some future stereotypes demographic information about bloggers:
Other Internet behaviors of bloggers suggest an attraction to user generated content.
Bloggers are more than three times more likely than all Internet users to download Podcasts, and more than twice as likely to download/watch videos online. Twenty-Five percent of bloggers download or listen to audio clips online as opposed to the 8 percent of all other connected adults.
Bloggers are also adopters of new technology. They are 76 percent more likely than all Internet users to be a part of household that owns a PDA, 54 percent more likely to have an
MP3 player and 37 percent more likely to have a satellite radio subscription.“Bloggers tend to have a different relationship with the Internet than the average user.
They are more likely to advantage of its utility for standard household and personal tasks, such as email, shopping and online banking,” said Mr. Meo. “Given that they are contributing to the content of the Internet itself, it’s not surprising that bloggers are more advanced online than your average Internet user, and more tech savvy overall.”Demographically, bloggers are young and hail from middle class families. They are 66
percent more likely than the national average to be between the ages of 18 and 34. Fifty
percent of bloggers are part of a household that has children under 17, as opposed to 41
percent of the total population. Bloggers are 20 percent more likely than the national average to have an annual household income between $50k and $100k per year.
Why is Buffalo so damn low down the scale?
The top cities for bloggers have tech savvy and youth in common. Thirty-seven percent of Austin adults are between the ages of 18-34; they are 20 percent more likely than the national average to be within this age range.
Ouch.
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And this is some sort of revelation…not…
Look at the demographics of the region…it is getting poorer and older as I write this here…
What does this tell us? (especially since Syracuse and Rochester rate so high, but on most other demo measures are extremely similar to Buffalo)
Is this a city or metropolitan analysis (thus penalizing B’lo for UB’s North Campus being in Amherst – with its dorms, housing, techsavy youth, etc.)?
This region is still blessed with a relatively non-mobile, non-transient society that (for better or worse) gets all the news it needs from local sources. Most of the cities listed and virtually all in the top ten are also large on the destination list for young and mobile professionals, for whom the local media is not nearly a sufficient or interesting information source.
I concur with FancyWow’s insinuation that the survey does not include campuses, which with their 40,000 or so combined student populations would undoubtedly double, and possibly triple, our percentage.
Doesn’t matter. This survey will be trite in another 20 years when all information is passed along in the form of a blog or its evolutionary equivalent.
BBD
Don’t worry BP, you’re still one of my fave bloggers in WNY…. and you always will be
There are atleast 20 blogs I go to faithfully everyday.
I get more info from blogs (here on WNYmedia & alike) than I do from watching the news stations. And that reminds me, if “blogging” is such a low, why is a news station like channel 2 trying to copy what bloggers do?
Actually it is probably more to the contrary with the UB point…take away the region’s universities and local colleges and we would be dead last…
If Fancy W’s point is valid, how could Pittsburgh be so low…Pitt, Carnegie Mellon, Duquesne and a host of other colleges are inside of Pittsboob proper…
The point is the region is still in decline and we boost both a large and growing poor and aging population base…the chronologically challenged are generally not tech savvy and the poor can’t afford to be tech savvy…
Can we find out how they defined the Buffalo area?
The reason I think that campuses were essentially excluded is because the survey group probably used the phone book to make random survey phone calls, like maybe 100-200 per city. Most students would not be in the phone book, nor would their cell phone numbers be listed anywhere.
Most cities, therefore, would have had their campus populations excluded. It’s just that we have a significant fraction of college students – no matter how temporary – in both city and regional population, so including or excluding them would make a much larger difference in the results than in most other cities (excepting Columbus, OH).
It’s still going to be trite 20 years from now.
BBD
Sorry if this posts twice. First time I included hyperlinks which seemed to be rejected. So you’ll have to copy and paste the URLs below to see the maps.
In this survey, “Buffalo” refers to the Nielsen “Designated Market Area”, of which there are 210 arcoss the U.S.
Buffalo’s DMA includes the eight western counties of NY, and two counties of Northern PA.
In the press release to which BP linked above, at the bottom of the PDF doc it’s stated:
Also, the table listing cities at the end of that press release is labeled “DMA”. Probably those listed in the table are the 80 or so most urban of the 210 total DMAs.
Here’s a link to a map on Wikipedia that shows all 210 DMAs across the U.S.:
http://tinyurl.com/c792l
And here’s a link to a larger map of Buffalo’s DMA:
http://tinyurl.com/yrclby
Actually, no you won’t – it did make them click-able links.
In the 2nd one, scroll to bottom of that page to see the map below the ads. In the first one, we’re obviously a little green splotch of the same shape.
What do they define as a Blog. Those Little daily diaries That people keep on-line. The what I saw on the way to work, or ate for lunch…nonsense. The ones that are never read, and have the life span of a fruit fly.
Buffalo is dying that is for sure we need to be realistic
So I gather that all of you went down the list of characteristics and went “Yep.Yep.Yep…”
If it had been a test, I would have flunked. I guess that makes me “atypical”, which might account for “boring”.
Well, I guess I’ll go manicure my nails and then write about it – carefully.
Hey BP and all, as a Rochester resident and fan of Buffalo this one has me scratching my head – that Rochester came in with 9% and Buffalo just 2%! I’m trying to think what Rochester-area blogs people might be looking at, and drawing a blank – they’re all quite lame, including (ahem) one I tried my hand at earlier this year. In fact, our local fishwrapper decided to try being hip and getting all down with that jiggy Blog-O-Sphere (word!) and got volunteers to be “citizen bloggers” for each of the communities in the coverage area. But most of them are quite lame (seeing a common theme here?) and on the odd occasion that one of them really brings to the fore some bit of juicy news about a local politician, for example, our cowardly fishwrapper refuses to follow up with any “real” coverage saying “those aren’t *really* our blogs, we just provide the server space. (wink)”
There isn’t a single Rochester-area blog I check regularly, but I do love and frequent several Buffalo-area blogs such as BRO, Fix Buffalo Today, Broadway Fillmore Alive, and – no pandering I swear – BP. Also, I often tell people here in My Fair City how Buffalo’s bloggers are playing a real and significant role in the City’s revitalization. Look at David “Fix Buffalo” Torke’s outing of Rev. Stenhouse, who now finds himself OFF the Buffalo Control Board (yea!). Look at the attention brought to bear on community development issues by BRO. Look at the new sense of identity and energy brought to Polonia by Broadway Fillmore Alive. Look – if you dare! – at the ugly record of Sen. Dale Volker assembled for your perusal by BP. Oh, nearly forgot: I recently finished Mark Goldman’s latest, “City on the Edge,” which mentions Buffalonians checking the latest on BRO. To make a long story short, my view from afar is that blogs and blogging play a significant role in Buffalo.
Then why such a low score for Buffalo, and (even more mysteriously) such a high score for RaChaCha–? Maybe all of us are reading your Buffalo blogs!
If reference to my comment above: as much as it pains me to be cruel, if you want to check out a quick example of the quality of the Rochester fishwrapper’s “citizen blogs”, here you go:
[http://www.democratandchronicle.com/blogs/penfield/2007/10/dirt-piles-are-fun-to-play-in.html]
Scout’s honor, this is genuine.
OK, let’s shorten it up a bit – I swear this the last you’ll hear from me today:
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/blogs/penfield/2007/10/dirt-piles-are-fun-to-play-in.html
@TseTse: You hit on a good point. I have to assume that a standard percentage of Buffalo’s 18-to-35-year-olds make use of MySpace, LiveJournal, Blogger, Twittr, Flickr and the like to post their thoughts on cats and what was for lunch today, and many of them wouldn’t consider themselves “bloggers,” per se. If the measurement is based on comments and posts on free-standing blogs, then we lose to big youth cities by default. As anyone in the advertising-driven blog world will tell you, reliable online readership metrics are scarce stuff indeed.
Blogger* – Adult who has read or contributed to a blog within the past 30 days
Internet Users** – Adults who have accessed the Internet within the past 30 days
That is exactly how Scarborough Research defined it. Astute content and comments weren’t part of it.
I have to echo everything that RaChaCha said. I don’t regularly check any Rocha blogs, and I can’t think of any equivalent to WNYM.net out here.
I am a little surprised that so many people are seeing this as proof that there’s no young people around and that it’s another nail in Buffalo’s coffin. If that’s the case, why is Syracuse and Rocha 7% points higher? Doesn’t make sense.